February 20, 2002
Stalin's image sells phones, hotel rooms
Michel Viatteau Agence France-Presse MOSCOW - Tyrant Joseph Stalin is the Russian advertising industry's latest wheeze for promoting goods and services as varied as hotel rooms and cell phones.
The moustachioed megalomaniac with the twinkling eyes has been recruited in the sales pitch for the Sovietsky Hotel, a four-star establishment on Leningradsky Prospekt just outside the city centre built, it reminds us, on Uncle Joe's orders.
"One day, Stalin gave the order: build a hotel and astonish Europe," a firm male voice sings to a stirring military air in its promotional video.
The red flag with its hammer and sickle insignia flutters proudly in the wind, and the years fall away.
State-owned but now privately run, the Sovietsky has little doubt its unique selling point is its Stalinist heritage. The red neon hammer and sickle on the outside, and the abundant portraiture of Stalin and Lenin on the inside, all feature prominently in the seven-minute video.
It omits to mention that the dictator's secret police virtually ran the place, that secret passages still riddle the building, and that the bugs -- the electronic kind -- were finally removed only in the early 1990s.
"Sixty percent of our clients are German, and Stalin attracts them. They often stand and gaze at his portrait, perhaps because he reminds them of the Hitler era, when they were a major power," explained Valery Maximov, the Sovietsky's manager, with a disarming lack of tact.
As for the Russians themselves, "the well-to-do don't care about Stalin, and the middle classes react quite favourably: they're fed up with the chaos, and they remember that under Stalin there was order," he said.
And the cell phones? Salesmen say the latest fashion is to have the ring set to play the old Soviet anthem -- restored as the Russian anthem last year with new words.
===== Kevin Dean Buffalo, NY ICQ: 8616001 Buffalo Activist Network http://www.buffaloactivist.net
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